RIP, Waldenbooks

On Tuesday, our local branch of the Waldenbooks franchise closed down for good. Undoubtedly, there will be a number of customers that will be coming to the mall in the next six to twelve months asking whoever rents out that spot where the bookstore went, but there you have it.

Borders, which owns Waldenbooks, decided late last year that they were going to close down 200 of the smaller mall locations around the country. Two in Vermont - Berlin (My store) and Rutland, were both on the cutting block, although the Borders express in South Burlington will remain open. I'm guessing that this is a bit of a complicated position for Borders - the recent financial crisis added to the already piling issues that brick and mortar face: declining sales in light of competition from online retailers, not to mention absolutely inefficient business practices on the part of how Borders runs their stores, something I've ranted about before.

Still, with all my issues about Borders aside, I will miss working there, and the store itself. I began work in the fall of 2006, where I worked at the Kiosk, and continued to work through the winter and next fall as a regular employee, before leaving to work at Norwich University. I returned late last year after a friend left, because I was hit with a bit of nostalgia for the store and working there. While that didn't last long, it was nice while it lasted. I've long been a customer at this particular branch, even before I went to work there. The selection for what I was looking for, mainly science fiction, was always top-notch, and when I began to work there, I met a number of people who I likely wouldn't have met normally, and like camp, I've managed to hold onto a good group of close friends.

Looking back at my time there, I've often told myself that if I'm ever going to be in a position to make a television show, I'll write something about here. There was endless problems with customers, other employees (there was always drama of some sort) and from all that, quite a lot of humor and laughter. Romance books were something that could easily be thrown across the store at an annoying co-worker, but also the slow times, after all of our duties were done, chatting with people for a couple hours in-between customers. There are a lot of good memories there, which I'll remember over the bad times that I've had there (and there were several). Hell, I'll even miss some of our crazy regular customers who were really out there.

Plus, the bookstore was a source of a lot of books for me. We made sure (when we could) that the comics and Science Fiction and Fantasy section was well stocked, special ordering books that we knew would move out the door, kept it well stocked and neat, and offered a good selection of other books as well. There's a bunch of stores in the area, such as Bear Pond Books, Rivendell Books and the Northfield Bookstore, but they just don't have the same selection. I'll stop in when I can, but I just won't make a point to stop by and browse, because my friends won't be there either, as I'd often do over the past couple of years.

So, farewell, bookstore. I'll miss giving you money in exchange for feeding my habit of books, and while my wallet and bookshelves won't thank you, I'll miss the fun times that never will be, and the friends that I made there.

Your fantasies merge with harsh realities

The movie Toy Story had a profound effect on me as a child - for a little while, I had my doubts that toys were really inanimate objects, much like the same doubts about the validity of Santa Claus and god. I was pretty sure that they didn't exist, but who knew for sure? Thus, I made sure to take very good care of what I had, lest they awaken in the middle of the night and try to exact revenge. Almost fifteen years on, and I know that's an amusing quirk, but I did gain some useful skills out of it: treat what you own with some semblance of respect, and they last longer. As I grew older, I found that I applied this philosophy to other things - namely books. I made sure that they were kept in prime condition, even going to great lengths to ensure that friends didn't abuse them while in their care. Even today, I'm still wary of lending books to people.

Thus, book stripping day is particularly troublesome for me at the bookstore, and even more so now that our store is closing for good. Recently, it was announced that Borders was closing 200 of their Waldenbooks stores in a response to the economy and to focus more on the bigger box stores that they have littered around the country. Our humble store is being shut down, and part of that entails scaling down our inventory in preparation for that. The Christmas season is a logical time to do that - there's a boost in sales, and I'm sure that a lot of inventory will go. Still, there is a lot of books that we are returning, and even more that we are destroying. Mass Market paperbacks are those that the store has us destroy, rather than mail back to a central holding area in order to resell them. Other chains carry a similar practice, and books are stripped of their front cover and thrown into recycling or the trash, with the covers mailed back to be accounted for.

This bothers me, a lot, because I absolutely hate the idea of both books being tore up, but also that a perfectly good book is otherwise tossed in the trash. As I've written many times before, I'm an avid reader, and I hold onto my books. I like the idea of having floor to ceiling shelves packed to capacity for that occasional time when the power shuts off and I'm left with nothing to do but read. I rarely give away or resell books, even if I've read them before - there's that niggling 'What if' in the back of my head when it comes to re-reading things, and I figure someday, I'll have a great collection of books to give away to a library or something like that. The corporate policy in this instance particularly grates with my own beliefs when it comes to books, especially when these books could easily be donated to those in need of a good read, or to struggling libraries somewhere.

What is even worse, in my mind, is that many of the books that are being destroyed are books that would likely be sold in the next month - I pulled a number of reputable authors off the shelf and from overstock to put into the pile, only to leave a number of other books that I don't think that I've ever sold or moved. It boggles the mind that we're reducing the number of J.R.R. Tolkien's books to make way for David Weber. The end result is that our Science Fiction section is being diluted with crappy books, which will likely hurt sales even more. It's frustrating to begin converting some of these genres to tie-in stories with huge, dedicated fan bases, away from some of the more 'original' SF/F that is far better in terms of quality and personal interest. I can understand the reasoning behind it, but that doesn't necessarily make it a better.

The other problem that I have with this situation is that it’s an incredibly wasteful symptom of commercial policy that demonstrates a lot of the excesses that got the country into financial trouble in the first place. Borders sent our store too many books with every shipment - something that I'm assuming falls under the notion of: "if the customer wants it, it should be there", rather than ordering the book for them, and having them either come in again, or pay for the book there and have it mailed to their home. The end result is a store that is packed to capacity - and most likely violating several fire and safety codes - with too much merchandise that is not going to move. This makes me wonder how much of Border's budget is devoted to the shipping of books back and forth, not to mention the amount of money that is spent on books that will ultimately never sell.

The large chain stores are really not doing well, especially in the face of major sellers such as Amazon.com, and it's no wonder, when you look at just how inefficient their business practices are. It's even more of a shame when it seems likely that excesses such as these have helped to contribute to the closing of stores - it's no longer cost effective to keep them in operation, but only because they have such a high push of merchandise that is designed to boost sales.

I'm annoyed that this is happening, and in a way, glad that I'm no longer going to be employed with the company anymore with the shutdown (or earlier, if some middle-management desk jockey decides that he/she's offended by this) because I dislike the sheer industrial and commercial grinder that these stores have become. There's no love for the books, for stories or for really retaining customers. It's a business in a place where there should at least be some pretense of an institution that is at least interested in what they're selling.